Palestinian members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) take part in a military show in Gaza
(photo credit: REUTERS)

Barbara Rubin – Palestinian Syndrome – Do You Suffer From It?

Newspapers devote a great deal of column space to the Middle East for good reason. Political and judicial freedoms began there when the nation of Israel stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai – prior to gaining land borders – and created a revolutionary set of new laws. Those laws went far beyond the seven Noahide rules (1) and well beyond even the ten commandments. A democratically elected judiciary was formed and military service was mandated on the part of each tribe for the period required to gain the land later named for the nation of Israel.

Four or five occupations (2) later, depending upon your starting date for a timeline of activity in the land of Israel, the destruction of the second Temple was accompanied by a brand new phenomenon. The prevailing empire of Rome changed the name of the land to Philistinia (Palestine) so that the name and ways of Israel might be forever erased. With the memory of Jerusalem carried throughout the next two millennia by multiple groups, the 1948 resumption of self-governance by Israel within a portion of those ancient lands, was accompanied by the need to attend to those still carrying the label of ‘Palestinian’ (3). Largely a people who had functioned under the Ottoman Empire, this group of traders had relied upon profits earned through supplying settlers, soldiers and pilgrims with needed goods and services. Coinage was minted only after the British Mandatory was in control. No central Palestinian authority existed until they became a counter-influence alongside of the re-established Israeli government. The Palestinian Authority, an offshoot of the terrorist Al Fatah movement, exists today as head of a failed state, unwilling to attain financial independence from their United Nations designated status as generational refugees.

Rabbi Yishai Fleisher listed numerous options soon to be brought into play that will grant Palestinians paths to citizenship within a number of nations/countries in a N.Y. Times editorial (4). The futures of the Palestinian children will be different than that of their parents and grandparents. However, that does not address the problems of others suffering from ‘Palestinian Syndrome’. Other national groups have been re-named in the past two centuries so that their individuality would be subsumed under new labels or altered borders. This represents efforts to offset anticipated economic hardships or counter planned economic sabotage. Economics became the basket terminology used by persons silenced by fascists able to convince a large majority of passive individuals to relinquish all rights of ownership and land usage to a threatening patriarchal form of government. In order to promote a sense of ‘parity’ among uniformly threatened citizens, feudal structures were revised diminishing ownership rights entirely in favour of ‘communist’ communities forming to pacify fascists with promises of productivity and passivity. In direct opposition to the demand by free-market proponents to define a standard for ‘living’ while creating the means for fiscal mobility within all strata of society, various new versions of ‘Palestinians’ were created on every continent.

The European Union replaced national identities among its former constituent nations in the name of socialism. Pooling resources to prevent loss of access to food and shelter as experienced during WWII permitted the ways of the former European nations to become diluted and forgotten with the influx of genuine migrants needing temporary support. An even larger group of permanent dependents was established, meant to drain both culture and money from the new entity. Communism expanded westward from Eastern Block countries created at the Potsdam conference (5), thereby proving that self-determination has been an extremely rare phenomenon in the Western World. The awarding of any lands to Stalin as a prize for not siding with Hitler is a warning to all nations. After the most highly educated of European societies had become debased, communist ideals of food and jobs replaced the goals of the vastly individualized European identities. Those wearied of the crimes committed by neighboring states dreaming only of conquest failed to realize they would soon conquer themselves via this view of freedom as a mere chess game for the few to play.

England will never forget their origins and painful evolution into a premier world power. With EU (6) membership pending for several Balkan nations, Greek Cyprus and even Turkey, the UK wisely brexited. However, England’s panicking dependents holding UK passports will hopefully soon remember why they didn’t profit from unification with the EU. Nonetheless, English identity suffered heavily on that island with large numbers suffering from ‘Palestinian Syndrome’. Who is a citizen of the UK and do they possess the rights and responsibilities formerly accorded the English?

Born in Washington Heights, New York, I’ve witnessed how the body of laws formulated by the Continental Congress (7) of the United States of America came to be replaced with the dubious name of our continent – America. Americans tolerate everything from torture (with deficit spending funding Guantanomo Bay prison, built along the lines of Dachau’s SS training camp) to the open support of criminal aliens serving either themselves or foreign governments. Given the fact that the United States legal code stood for freedom of speech and movement by populations desiring mobility of location and class, our administrations even created agencies to warn citizens of encroaching harm (e.g. EPA, NSA, NIH, HHS). I’m unsure why people prefer to be ‘good Americans’ rather than United States citizens looking after the welfare of our respective states and our neighbors. Told by many that the cause is ‘debt’, I remain at a loss to understand why we should become American Palestinians living as refugees under foreign lenders.

We now boast the capability of meeting subsistence standards for living without requiring rites of human sacrifice reminiscent of Gallipoli or Stalin’s killing spree of twenty million Russians during WWII. Few would have a hard time believing that war alone was responsible for the ethnic and political cleansing accomplished during that period of Russian history. Numerous genocides (8) have followed from the starvation of 45 million Chinese duringMao’s reign in the 1960s to those recorded in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur and Bosnia during successive decades. How to record excessive death rates from preventable disease and infant mortality remains a chronic problem to this day. For those deprived of fresh air, sustenance and shelter within our many poisoned cities, only beds in psychiatric wards are offered to individuals left with a fig leaf and a bloody scarf over an invisible head wound. Why are our records so amorphous, as though our neighbors were not ‘ours’ and our government’s strangers to their constituents?

‘Palestinian Syndrome’ explains much of the above phenomenon. The belief your passport does not represent you or your government is not unusual today. The behaviour of individuals has altered greatly with declining intra-national viewpoints and visions of brighter futures across multiple nations. Representing only oneself through iii identification with a religion, profession, or business enterprise provides a degree of consolation among increased fears in a terror-ridden world. Desired anonymity in a large crowd was common in tyrannical societies but aggression in the form of terror led to the reality of being known by rulers and/or leaders tracking hazards. No longer lost in the big city or the vastness of rural countrysides, we will have to ally ourselves with strong pasts, diminished presents and visions of a level of self-determination dreamt of by only a limited number of surviving populations of strongly shared purpose.

The need for those with visions of a shared future may be likened to the basic need for literacy. Should children ha e to be homeschooled due to severe budget cuts, what would you teach in your Social Studies units about the realities of living in your community? What laws apply or does the legal profession only represent interests foreign to your region? How do you cover the truth in philosophy an hour after reading the newspaper? Some of the material will be true for some families and not true for others. Reality can’t be treated with all due respect unless the facts are plainly dealt like cards at a poker table.

I hope readers will ask themselves tonight whether you are Palestinians or nationals of your region. Establishing that relationship with your leadership will advance all regional populations in planning for present and future aggressions. Were we to divide up wars in terms of their purposes, we might begin with Wars of Independence, like the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 in the United States. That is in direct opposition to Wars of Dependence (9) like the American Civil War. In that latter example, southern ties to European cotton markets vied with northern insistence upon internal strength and economic unity to remain ‘in house’. Competing interests should be identified and regrouping of misplaced interests performed prior to the house to house fighting seen in Syria. Syria is well able to point at their own Palestinian problem while we remain in denial.

War, like coffee, appears to be brewing everywhere.

References:

(1)Noahide rules: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-seven-noachide-laws

(2)Early challenges/occupations of Jerusalem: https://www.science.co.il/israel-history/ https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/timeline-for-the-history-of-jerusalem-4500-bce-present

(3)Origins of the Palestinian Authority: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Palestinian-Authority

(4)Editorial on future solutions to Palestinian problems in Gaza:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/opinion/a-settlers-view-of-israels-future.html

(5)Potsdam Conference: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/potsdam-conf ; http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/decade17.asp

(6)EU membership: https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/countries_en

(7)Continental Congress of the USA: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1776-1783/continental-congress

(8)Modern genocides: http://endgenocide.org/learn/past-genocides/ ; http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/maos-great-leap-forward-killed-45-million-in-four-years-2081630.html

(9)Wars of Dependence: http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/161/cotton-in-a-global-economy-mississippi-1800-1860